Celebrity Crimes vs. The People: Why We Pay While They Play
It’s no secret that the more money and power you have, the more you can get away with. Getting a DUI for the majority of people means up to $10,000 in fines, losing your license, being required to attend AA, getting points on your license, and basically screwing up your life for a while. When you’re rich and famous, however, you can run over a hobo and a line of coke on the back of an endangered bird, and at worst have to sign autographs for the officer that pulls them over. You may think that is a bit of hyperbole, but let’s just take a look at Lindsay Lohan’s rap sheet:
- May 26, 2007: Lohan is collared on a charge of driving under the influence and possession of cocaine after losing control of her Mercedes in a booze-fueled car wreck in Beverly Hills.
- July 24, 2007: The actress is taken into custody in Santa Monica on suspicion of driving under the influence, driving on a suspended license and possession of cocaine after she gets into a verbal argument with a woman whom she chased in her SUV.
- Aug. 23, 2007: Lohan pleads guilty to misdemeanor cocaine use and driving under the influence and is sentenced to one day in jail and 10 days of community service and placed on three years’ probation.
- Nov. 15, 2007: LiLo spends a whopping 84 minutes in the Lynwood, Calif. jail before being released due to overcrowding.
- March 13-16, 2009: A Beverly Hills judge issues a $50,000 warrant related to Lohan’s May 2007 DUI arrest only to rescind it three days later after her attorney Shawn Holley shows that the starlet has been complying with the terms of her probation.
- Oct. 16, 2009: The judge in her DUI case extends Lohan’s probation by an additional 12 months so she can complete her court-ordered alcohol education program, which she had up until that point failed to do given her ever-busy career.
- May 20, 2010: Her probation is revoked and a bench warrant is issued for the thespian’s arrest after Lohan skips a court date to attend the Cannes film festival and then claims she couldn’t get back because, in the words of her attorney, “her passport was stolen.” The judge sets her bail at $100,000, which she later pays to win her freedom.
- May 24, 2010: The trouble-prone party girl is fitted with an alcohol-monitoring SCRAM device on her ankle and ordered to refrain from drugs and booze and undergo weekly random drug testing as part of the conditions of her bail.
- June 8, 2010: A judge rules Lindsay’s in violation of her probation, hikes her bail to $200,000 and issues a new bench warrant for her arrest two days after Lindsay’s SCRAM ankle brace suspiciously lights up at an MTV Movie Awards afterparty. The warrant is subsequently recalled after a bail bondsman covers Lohan’s bond.
- July 6, 2010: Lohan is sentenced to 90 days in jail for failing to attend her court-ordered weekly alcohol education classes.
- July 20, 2010: Linds surrenders and ultimately ends up serving two weeks due to prison overcrowding and the non-violent nature of her crime.
- Sept. 24, 2010: Lohan’s probation revoked after she flunks a drug test which found cocaine in her system.
- Sept. 28, 2010: Lohan leaves jail and goes directly to rehab.
- Dec. 12, 2010: During Lohan’s rehab stint, a staffer at the Betty Ford Center accuses the starlet of attacking her after she asks Lohan to submit to a drug and alcohol test. The charges are later dropped.
- Feb. 9, 2011: Surprise! LL is taken back into custody after pleading not guilty to stealing a $2,500 necklace from a Venice jewelry store.
- Apr. 22, 2011: Lohan is given 120 days in county jail and 480 hours of community service after a judge finds she violated her probation on the 2007 DUI. At the same time, her necklace-jacking charge is knocked down to a misdemeanor.
- May 26, 2011: She’s released from L.A.’s Lynwood Jail due to overcrowding and serves out the rest of her stint under house arrest.
- Oct. 19, 2011: The Mean Girls star has her probation revoked (again!) after she fails to perform her community service obligations. After being briefly detained, she gets out after posting $100,000 bail.
- March 14, 2012: Lohan is accused of allegedly sideswiping a person with her car outside a Hollywood hotspot and then fleeing the scene. L.A. prosecutors decline to prosecute, citing “no direct evidence.”
- March 29, 2012: The comeback kid finally completes the probation in her DUI case and is placed on informal probation for the necklace theft.
- Sept. 19, 2012: Lohan is arrested for allegedly clipping a man with her car outside New York City’s posh Dream Hotel and then leaving the scene. Manhattan D.A.’s office, however, opt not to bring charges, citing insufficient evidence.
- Oct. 10, 2012: Cops respond to a disturbance call at the Long Island, N.Y. home where Lindsay is staying with her mother, Dina Lohan, after the two allegedly have a massive blowout. No charges are filed, however.
- Nov. 29, 2012: Lohan popped outside Club Avenue in downtown Manhattan after she allegedly punched a woman in the face. (Via E!)
That all I pulled from the end of 2012. Looking up any more about her getting released due to overcrowding, getting house arrest, or being sent to rehab will make me chug all the stuff under the sink.
Looking at all her charges, even the one where she was “charged with driving under the influence and possession of cocaine after losing control of her Mercedes in a booze-fueled car wreck” she still got it easy. Do you think if a regular person drove drunk, crashed her car, and had coke on them, they wouldn’t get the book throw at them? I know someone who got a DUI with a .09 alcohol level (.01 over the limit), then a few months later, got charged with possession of marijuana because someone left a roach in their ashtray. They got A MONTH in jail. That is not even close to being as bad as Lohan, but again, money and power buys your freedom. Why is this allowed? And why is it so accepted that it’s basically a joke?
LAWYERS
Money buys the best lawyers. The best lawyers are those working in the entertainment industry for high-profile clients. They get the best because they can put up the money. If I am stupid enough to get caught doing any of this, I will end up getting a pretty good lawyer, but eating legal fees for years. This is why a lot of people just take the jail time because they can’t afford to fight the crime, even if they’re innocent. Imagine knowing you’re in the right, the cops screwed up, but you can’t prove it. Now, you’re sitting at a table signing a deal because you can’t afford to prove your point.
I got pulled over because I drove my parents car to the store one time not too long ago. They forgot to change the tags on the back and forgot to put the papers in the glove box. Sure, I was in the wrong for unknowingly driving a car that didn’t have them, but the cops slowed down in front of me to 15 mph below the speed limit just to target me. At no point before were they behind me to have any sense that I was doing anything wrong. I turned left out of my neighborhood and they were in front of me. After about 1/4 mile, they slowed down so that I was almost tailgating. The speed limit was 35 mph, and they were slowing to 20 mph. I was panicking. There was no reason to, but passing a cop feels stupid, and tailgating a cop is really stupid.
There was no side street to get out of it, so I passed, got pulled over at a store, and got a ticket. I went to the police station moments after with the paperwork and had the ticket reduced. I could have fought it in court, but since I knew it would be a hassle to argue my case, I just paid the ticket and left a defeated man. Also, I knew I’d look like a lunatic explaining the situation in an even more detailed fashion with pictures of the route I took and so on (I won’t even go into how they never turned on their lights to give me the heads up I was being pulled over. I was walking from my car to the store with my hands in my coat pockets and they lit me up with their floodlight. I mean, what?!)
That is a tiny thing that happened to me, but celebrities are pulling all kinds of crap that would put all of us into jail for years. It really pays to have the best lawyers in the business to fight for you. The moment you see a celebrity do something stupid like do drugs and crash, then get 84 minutes in jail for it, you feel gypped by the justice system. Everyone is equal under the court of law, that is until you show your bank account number to the court. After that, your sentence will be a severe tongue lashing by a gang of puppies, followed by a party thrown in your honor.
Many celebs couldn’t get off with good lawyer, though. Martha Stewart, Phil Spector, and Illinois’ Governor are recent examples. Sometimes overwhelming evidence is too hard to fight. Just kidding, OJ Simpson cut two people’s heads off and got released because a glove was too small. Thankfully, he still wanted to be an idiot and later went to jail for other stuff. And to think that Hollywood didn’t want him as The Terminator because they thought audiences wouldn’t believe he could be that brutal.
REPUTATION DAMAGE SEEN AS PUNISHMENT
When a celebrity screws up badly, they often get a light sentence. A lot of the reason for this is that the damage to their reputation is bad enough to punish them. Most normal people can’t be punished like this, so this can be seen as just as bad as jail time. Bill Cosby has been dragged through the mud in the public court for almost 50 women coming out saying he drugged and raped them. Sure, this sounds bad, but he never spent anytime in jail, even though reports just came out he admitted to doing it in 2005. Spot-on job by the judge in that one. He even had an episode of The Cosby Show where he made a BBQ sauce that made women docile, lose their inhibitions, and get all “huggy buggy.” Seriously!
He even comes and rubs the sauce of of the male boys mouth! How was that on TV and not totally obvious there were quaaludes in that sauce?!
Mel Gibson was pulled over drunk and went apesh*t when he was pulled over. He verbally assaulting the female cop and for some reason started blaming stuff on the Jews. Then there was that stuff with his ex. His career? Practically over. Jail? Nah, he got a plea deal after a domestic abuse charge. Drinking and driving, hitting your wife? The punishment of the public calling him a dummy was all the punishment needed.
OVERCROWDING
If you know anything about the prison system, most prisons are overcrowded because we put people in jail for nonviolent offenses all the time. This is because of corruption, private prisons for profit, and absurd laws that punish people for small offenses like possession of a bit of marijuana.
Lawyers often use this to get multiple offenders like Lindsay Lohan out of jail quickly because she there are so many in prison, and she can afford to spend the money to get transferred to rehab or house arrest. It must really suck when you get house arrest in your Hollywood Hills home for a month. Do you know how long it takes the delivery man to drive up your driveway? Sooo long!
Prison costs the government a lot of money each year, and getting rich celebrities to pay the bill to get out seems like a nice compromise. However, if you get garbage municipal violation, the system will keep screwing you over and over to the point that your life is ruined and you go to jail. Let John Oliver depress you even further:
You can hear the first woman in the video get annoyed by the police explaining the ticket. It’s pretty much, “Yeah, I know, give me the ticket, I’m late for work. If I’m late for work, I lose my job and can’t pay this stupid f*cking ticket.”
A friend of mine had a house party where the police were called. The police check all of our ID’s and then arrested one of my friends on an outstanding warrant. He didn’t drive, so we couldn’t think of anything he did wrong as he was being dragged away. It turns out that he received a jaywalking ticket a few years back when on vacation up North in Michigan that slipped his mind. Jaywalking made the cops slam him against the back of the squad car and handcuff him like they found a sex dungeon full of torsos in his basement.
The ability to pay to get out of jail should require jails in California to have revolving doors on the front with gift baskets full of artisan cheeses and nice smelling soaps handed out as you make the turn to exit. To put it simply: The more power and fame that you have, the more ability you have to get away with what most of us dread. What really gets me is…. why don’t these rich people call an Uber?
“Do you know my name, sir? You don’t need to know my name? YOU’RE ABOUT TO FIND OUT WHO I AM! – Reese Witherspoon.
If you’re drunk and wired on coke, you’d think Uber or a cab would be the obvious decision, or maybe they just like proving they can get away with it. Maybe they like to show people who they are or how important they are?
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Jeff Sorensen is an author, writer and occasional comedian living in Detroit, Michigan. You can look for more of his work on The Huffington Post, UPROXX, BGR and by just looking up his name.
Contact: jeff@socialunderground.com